


Iconic

by Redrikki



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Canon Queer Character, Coming Out, Dysfunctional Family, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Lesbian Vanya Hargreeves, Misunderstandings, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-09
Updated: 2019-07-09
Packaged: 2020-06-25 08:17:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19741759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Redrikki/pseuds/Redrikki
Summary: When Vanya learns Klaus is gay from an article in a teen magazine, she's upset for more than a few reasons.





	Iconic

**Author's Note:**

> This is based off of an anonymous tumblr prompt asking for Klaus and Vanya gay bonding. It is probably not quite what the prompter had in mind.

Klaus came out in an interview when they were fifteen. Vanya found out a month later, reading an article about it in one of Allison’s teen magazines. He’d always been weird about women’s clothes and make-up, but it had never been anything special. It was just one more thing that made Dad frown, like the drugs and booze, or his childish refusal to embrace his true potential.

This was different though. Klaus told some reporter he liked boys and suddenly he was “a gay icon” and “an important role model for the queer community.” Vanya liked girls, she’d liked them for a while now. She’d just never thought to brag about it. She should be the one being lauded as “brave” and “iconic.” Klaus was already a superhero with superpowers. He couldn’t have let her have this?

It wasn’t fair. Vanya tore the magazine in two and the slow rrrrrrrrip seemed to embed itself within her brain. It wasn’t fair. She was so angry she was shaking. The walls were shaking. It wasn’t fair!

“Vanya? Vanya!”

She came back to herself with crumpled bits of magazine clenched in each fist and stupid gay icon Klaus standing in her doorway.

“Are you okay?”

She took a deep, shaky breath, and slowly let it out. “You like boys?”

Klaus’s gaze darted from her face to the magazine and back again. “Yeah. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. Dad--"

“Dad,” Vanya scoffed.

After they came back from the interview, Dad had taken Klaus back to his study and kept him there for over an hour. Probably to tell him how iconic and important to the queer community he was. Klaus had come down to dinner after flushed and trembling, wearing an obscene amount of eye shadow. Everyone had stared at him all through the meal and not one of them had the decency to tell her why.

“I like girls, you know.” Vanya threw the words in his face.

“Vanya,” he said excitedly, breaking out in a wide grin, “that’s--" his face fell. “Does anyone else know?” he asked urgently. “Does _Dad_?”

He was worried Dad would find out she was gay too? None of them had ever seen her as competition before. Vanya felt a thrill at the idea. “No. Not yet.” She’d save it for later.

“I’m really glad you felt like you could tell me,” he said, putting his hand on her shoulder. “That’s really brave.” Vanya searched his expression for a hint of teasing, but he was oddly serious for once. Then he smiled, bright and almost manic. “Any girls in particular?”

Vanya shrugged uncomfortably. “Not really.” She didn’t really know many girls besides Mom and Allison and that would just be weird. It was more that she liked girls in theory, the way they looked on the street or in their sister’s fashion magazines. That sort of thing.

“Well, you’ve got to have a type,” he said, snatching up the ruined magazine and plunking down on her bed like he owned it. “Come show Auntie Klaus what you like.”

The spent the next half-hour of their weekly free time pawing through the pages, talking about the girls and clothes they liked. It was nice. Fun. Almost like they really were a family.

**Author's Note:**

> Fandom has this tendency to wooblify Vanya (and Klaus too, but that's another story), but the truth is she's deeply angry and resentful woman who decided to publicly eviscerate her siblings after seeing one of their old comic books at a pawn shop. If Luther was annoyed by the way Klaus played the family mascot and attention whore, I have no doubt Vanya resented the shit out of it.


End file.
